Canadian poet takes up e-residence

The Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop will kick-off its e-Writer in Residence for the spring of 2013 at a reading/meet-and-greet session in Thunder Bay later this month.

The event, to be held April 22 at the Brodie Library, will introduce Marilyn Dumont, a Canadian poet of Cree/Métis descent, who will provide manuscript critiques and workshops for regional writers until May. On April 23, the new e-Writer in Residence will hold a poetry workshop.

Dumont is the second e-writer in residence for the writers’ group, following a successful program in 2011.

She has been published in numerous Canadian literary journals, and her work has been widely anthologized as well as broadcast on radio and television. Her first collection won the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, presented by the League of Canadian Poets, for the best first collection of poetry that year by a Canadian writer. Her second collection won the 2001 Stephan G. Stephansson Award from the Writer’s Guild of Alberta.

Dumont, who has taught at Simon Fraser University, Kwantlen University-College and the University of Alberta, has been writer-in-residence at the universities of Alberta, Windsor and Toronto and at Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton.

The Northwestern Ontario Writers Workshop is a group of writers from the region who provide inspiration and support through workshops, a newsletter, and a writing contest.

Further information on the group and its e-Writer in Residence program is available by email at admin@nowwwriters.org or on the group’s website.

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Writers gather for Geraldton’s birthday

Writers and readers in northwestern Ontario will help Geraldton celebrate its 75^th anniversary by holding a literary festival over the Canada Day weekend.

The Squatchberry Festival will feature a dozen northwestern authors, as well as a couple of nationally known writers, participating in readings, workshops, panel discussions and social events at Geraldton’s Community Centre.

It will kick off Friday, June 29 with a presentation by award-winning Thunder Bay writer Charles Wilkins (The Circus at the Edge of the Earth; A Wilderness Called Home; Walk to New York: A Journey Out of the Wilds of Canada). Syndicated columnist Arthur Black will take the stage Saturday evening at the Squatchberry Banquet. Events then wrap up with a networking session on Sunday afternoon.

In between, writers will lead a series of workshops and discussions on novels, poetry, crime writing, magazine articles, short prose and other writerly topics.

The Canada Day festival revives an annual event that ran from 1981 to 1984 under the sponsorship of the now-defunct Squatchberry Journal, a northwestern Ontario arts and literature publication.

Further information on the program and registration for the weekend is available at the festival website.

The former Town of Geraldton is now part of the Municipality of Greenstone, formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of eight communities that stretch along Highway 11 from Lake Nipigon to Long Lac.